


Deadlights

by Sarah_Vincent1506



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Blood, F/M, M/M, Multi, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-30 06:09:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20809829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah_Vincent1506/pseuds/Sarah_Vincent1506
Summary: “Looks like one weak link breaks the whole chain.”Linked with the AskPolyLosersClub Ask Blog on Tumblr, in which the adult Losers are in a polyamorous relationship.WARNING: GRAPHIC SUICIDE ATTEMPT





	Deadlights

_“It’s back.”_

Bill’s words echo around the kitchen, only seconds before filled with laughter and conversation, now silent. It stretches out uncomfortably for what feels like an age, all eyes on Bill as he stands at the head of the table, phone gripped so tightly in his hand it seems as though he might break it. Perhaps its presence, and his hold upon it, is the only thing preventing it from breaking _him_.

_Fear._

That’s what it is. That’s what Stan feels wash over him so suddenly it makes him nauseous and dizzy. It’s in the room, now. Everywhere. Hanging around them like a thick, sticky black shadow, suffocating everything else. Feelings, thoughts, images…_memories_…they hit him all at once, like a series of rapid blows to the chest, each one causing more of an impact, each one causing more damage. He can feel his heart beating so fast he wonders how he can still be breathing, how it hasn’t just stopped altogether.

_“Mike said it’s b-back…”_

Stan hears Bill’s voice again, quieter, this time, and with the presence of a stammer that hasn’t appeared in well over a decade. He’s still staring at him – everyone is – but Stan doesn’t really _see_ Bill. Bill is just the blurry background of this moment. Just the fuzzy periphery of Stan’s focus…a focus that is entirely fixed upon the numbness of his fingers as he lowers his wine glass to the table. He’s shaking so much that he almost drops it, and the resounding clatter of glass on wood makes him jump, but no one else appears to notice.

_“We have to g-g-go b-back.”_

It’s almost as though he’s in a different _world_ to everyone else, in that moment. They’re all still focused on Bill, and they’re talking, in confused and anxious tones, but their voices, like their faces, blur into the distance. It’s as though Stan can’t hear them…can’t see them…if he reached out to Eddie, beside him, he _truly_ believes he wouldn’t be able to touch him.

It’s like he’s trapped in a dream. But this is reality. He’s in the room, with them, but he isn’t. It would be more accurate to say he feels as though he is trapped in a…painting…

His skin starts to prickle uncomfortably. Itching, burning, but ‘pins-and-needles’ numb. He’s icy cold, but he’s sure that he’s sweating. Richie, at his other side, lowers his fork to his plate and Stan hears it so loudly he jumps back from the table. There’s a hand on his arm, then, squeezing, and another on his opposite shoulder, but he feels as though they’re gripping him too hard, it’s too much, he’s trapped.

_“Stan. Hey, what’s the matter? You okay?”_

“I’m fine,” he hears himself say, but it isn’t true, and it wasn’t really him speaking.

All eyes around the table are facing him, now, but he can barely focus…they just look white…standing out starkly from the blurry picture…dead…

_Deadlights._

He wills himself not to draw their attention, as they slowly begin to turn away. He doesn’t know why, but he just feels so afraid. His logical mind knows this isn’t real, that it’s panic, fear, stress, causing his body and his brain to react so violently, but somewhere deep, deep down, he knows that he _should_ be afraid.

His skin is more than prickling, now, it’s a painful sting, focused right around the edges of his face. He reaches his hand up to his forehead, beneath his hair, and he can feel the traces of tiny, fine scars that have faded into almost nothing. He never did remember how he got them. It’s wet.

When he lowers his hand, there’s blood on his fingertips. It oozes down his fingers and pools slightly in the centre of his palm, rings around the edges of another scar. This one he _does_ remember…the same scar they all share…this one he could never forget. It stands out at the centre of the congealing blood, white surrounded by red like the thin, grizzly slit of a painted mouth.

He hears a retching sound, as Richie jumps up to vomit into the kitchen sink.

_He feels someone watching him._

When he looks up, Beverly is staring from the opposite side of the table. Somehow, he can see her clearly, though everything else is still a thick, all-consuming haze. Her eyes are wide, her expression mirroring the same terror Stan feels, himself, and she is crying. He sees something in the reflection of her eyes, but he can’t quite make it out.

Lights.

Bright lights.

_Blinding lights._

All of a sudden, he can see them so clearly…so intense that he can even _feel_ the lights. But it isn’t like the warmth from a lightbulb, or a fire, it’s cold. _So cold_. There’s a flash of pain in his forehead, and behind his eyes, like the rapid onset of a migraine, and he grits his teeth against it, closes his eyes.

That’s when he sees it.

He sees _IT_.

He sees the seven of them, down there in the darkness, standing in a circle, hands clasped together, just like when they were children. There’s something in the middle of the circle, something Stan is too afraid to look at…he can hear shouting from all sides, but he can’t even tell what they’re saying…he’s just so scared…everything in him is telling him to get away…this can’t work, it won’t work, logically it’s impossible, they can’t fight it, they’re all going to die.

_“Stan, don’t let go!” _He hears Mike scream, from opposite him, _“We can’t break the circle!” _

The hands either side of him tighten. He doesn’t look to see who they belong to, but he knows without the need to. Bill is on his right. Richie is on his left.

_“I can’t do it,” _he hears himself say, and it’s quiet, and frightened, like a child, _“I’m so sorry.”_

He pulls his left hand free fairly easily, but on his right, Bill won’t let him go. When Stan looks at him, Bill is looking straight back, dirty, bleeding and bruised, but still _so_ brave.

_“Stan don’t let go! Don’t let go it’s okay! I’ve got you!”_

_“I’m sorry, Bill,” _he cries.

_It all happens so fast.._

There’s screaming from all sides, loud and raw and visceral, as Mike is grabbed so viciously by some giant, shadowy _thing_ lurking in the darkness behind him, that his head is torn almost completely free from his neck. Ben and Beverly, both more wildly terrified and distressed than Stan has ever seen them, are showered cruelly with his blood.

Stan doesn’t see what happens next, because he is pulled away suddenly. He trips and falls as they’re clambering through the strange, jagged rock formation in the middle of the cave. Bill doesn’t stop, though, dragging him up by his arm like he weighs nothing as they continue to run. He can still hear screaming, echoing around the damp walls; there’s no way of telling where it’s coming from, nor who. Bill is knocked clean over as Beverly is thrown into him, and Stan goes down, as well. He scrambles for them, in the dark, in icy water so black it looks as though he might sink into it and drown. Part of him wishes he could.

He hears Bill’s cry, as he cradles Beverly’s lifeless body in his arms. The sound allows Stan to find him, at least, and when he crawls over to them, Beverly’s eyes are wide open, staring perpetually in terror. There’s blood everywhere…all over her beautiful, pale skin, all over Bill. Stan feels the life leave her…_feels_ it…he knows Bill feels it too.

_“Bill, please…”_ is all Stan can manage, through sobs, as he pushes himself to his feet and grasps at Bill’s sleeve and his shirt collar with his shaking fingers.

As they’re running, once more, this time with Stan in the lead, they pass Ben, up against the wall of the cave, held there only by the spear of rock that’s piercing through his neck. The rest of his limbs hang loose and inanimate beneath. Stan tears his eyes away, can’t truly look, though he _knows_…his chest is burning, and it isn’t from lack of breath.

_He has never felt such pain in his life._

He distinctly hears Richie’s voice, then, _screaming_ for Eddie, before he is quickly silenced. Strange, blue orbs of light, rising in the centre of the cave, cast gruesome shadows on the wall right in front of them. Richie and Eddie, impaled together, on the end of what can only be described as a scaly, frilled tentacle, hanging and dancing in a grisly display like shadow puppets. Stan truly believes that had his beating heart been torn from his chest, it would not have felt _nearly_ as excruciating as this.

He feels Bill die…before he sees it…before he really knows it has happened…

There’s a terrible, crushing, squelching, _dripping_ behind him, loud in the silence that has suddenly fallen over the scene. Bill’s hand drops away from him. When he turns, he sees Bill’s face, first, twisted in agony and fear. But it is not fear for himself. It is fear for Stan. Stan knows that it is, and that somehow feels even worse.

His eyes, so thick with tears he can barely see, fall to Bill’s chest, then, where his heart, right out in the open, is held in the palm of a huge, white-gloved hand, as though offered up to him in consolation. The hand, clawed and twisted, tips to the side, drops Bill’s heart at Stan’s feet, before it slithers back through the gaping hole in his chest.

Stan hasn’t the desire to run, anymore. It left him, seconds earlier, the moment Bill did, the moment he lost everything else. He drops to his knees…or rather, his body does, as Bill falls heavily in front of him. He doesn’t beg for his life. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t beg for death, either, though he does want to do _that. _The ability to speak is far beyond him, now. He doesn’t really feel anything.

_“Oh, poor, poor, Stanley,” _Laughs a disturbing, sing-song voice, as the painted face of the clown looms into view, right in front of his own. Mocking him, it pretends to cry, _“Why, oh why, did my friends all have to die?”_

Stan feels numb. He wishes he could fight back, but he knows he can’t. He’s weak. He has always been the weakest.

_“Looks like one weak link breaks the whole chain.”_

Stan doesn’t resist when the clown opens its mouth. When its jaw unhinges, gapes terrifyingly wide. He can see the lights again, now…the deadlights…pulsing and rotating, growing brighter and brighter until he can’t see anything else. He feels…light.

Then he feels wood beneath his knuckles, his hands clasped so tightly against the kitchen table that he’s digging welts into his own skin with his fingernails. His cheeks feel wet, and he notices _that_ long before he notices that he’s crying. He can still see the lights, now in his open eyes, though the longer he looks at Beverly, the softer they get.

But when he blinks, he can still see them. Every time, behind his eyelids…in the darkness.

Everything else is clear again. The kitchen is back in focus, the smells, the sounds, the voices. Richie is still at the kitchen sink, looking pale and clammy as he leans against it, Bill beside him with a hand against his back, and Eddie a few steps away, pacing back and forth rapidly.

They seem to have reached some kind of consensus while Stan was…lost…because Ben re-enters the room with his jacket on, and he’s holding Beverly’s. She is still staring at Stan, the tears running rivulets down her face mirroring the ones on his own, but she stands, and Ben puts it onto her, fastening the buttons while she wipes at her cheeks with the back of her hand, and blinks rapidly, as though awakening from a daydream.

“_Stan-_” She begins, but Stan is already at his feet. He feels slightly woozy, and when he walks around the table, it’s an effort not to appear so.

“Stanley.” That’s Ben’s voice, now, and Ben holds at his shoulders with gentle hands, tries to stop him as Stan makes for the door, but Stan only shrugs him away, unable to look at him. Unable to look at any of them.

_One weak link._

He thinks it over and over as he leaves the room, voices behind him calling his name. Then footsteps, someone running to catch up.

“Stan?” It’s Bill’s voice, this time, “Where are you going?”

Bill grabs his arm, turns him around. He must see the look in his eyes, the tear-marks on his face, and Stan would feel embarrassed, normally, but he doesn’t. He feels…angry? Determined? Frantic? He knows what he has to do…and he knows that Bill can’t be there, when it happens. If he’s with him too long…if Stan has to hear his voice any longer…see him…look him in the eyes…he won’t be able to do it…

“I’m fine…I just want to be by myself for a while.”

“Do you th-think that’s a good idea?” Bill seems to wince, almost, when he stutters, cursing any weakness in front of Stan, when he wants to appear strong for him.

Stan doesn’t meet his eyes, though, looking at him as little as possible.

“Let me go.” Stan says resolutely. There’s definitely something definitive behind it that Bill must take as aggression, because he releases his hold on Stan’s arm. Stan feels an ache in his chest when he thinks of the true intent behind his statement.

He turns away, feeling his resolve weakening the longer Bill is near him.

“We can do this,” Bill says, then, as Stan is walking towards the stairs “We can beat it.”

_Not if I’m there._

Stan sees Bill watching him from the corner of his eye as he ascends the staircase.

_One weak link…_

He heads into Bill’s office, mindful not to touch anything, look at anything…reminisce...he heads straight for the desk, retrieves his glasses from his shirt pocket and puts them on. Frantically, he pulls a piece of paper from Bill’s old typewriter, grabs a pen from the pot, and begins to write.

_I am the weak link._

Stan neatly folds his first letter, slides it to one side, and begins the next

_There’s no shame in that._

Two more join the first, in a tidy pile. He is writing so quickly his wrist begins to ache.

_Everyone has weaknesses._

He finishes his sixth, and final letter, sealing it into an envelope with surprisingly steady fingers.

_And everyone has strengths._

More slowly, carefully, he writes out the names on the front of each envelope, feeling, every time, a little lighter, as though the owner of that name might now be safe from harm. Mike. Ben. Beverly. Eddie. Richie. Bill. His fingers shake, now, as he strokes them gently across the inky lines on the paper, tracing each curve as though committing them to memory.

_My strength has always been logic._

He removes his glasses, folds in the arms, and leaves them on Bill’s desk. The fine, golden band on his ring finger, he places beside them. And then, his watch; a present from Bill, for their twenty-year anniversary.

_I always think three moves ahead._

He stands, spreads out the letters, places them in a perfect row, across the edge of Bill’s desk.

_Move one._

He locks the bathroom door, once he’s inside.

_Move two._

His clothes are all folded into tidy squares, now, atop the sink vanity, as he slides down into the hot water. There’s an open razor blade, sitting sickeningly on the edge of the tub, and he stares at it for a _long _time, before he finally picks it up.

_Move three…_

Knowing that he has to do this…knowing that he’s willing to do this…doesn’t make it any easier…

_Weak links can be removed. The chain, as a whole, will still be strong, once it’s sealed back together._

He thinks of what he’s saving…and he remembers them all, as children, as vividly as though he’s there, now.

_“Swear, if it isn’t dead…if it ever comes back…we’ll come back, too.”_

One by one, he sees their faces, but it’s Bill, whose eyes he gets lost in, as he approaches. Dazzling blue, powerful and radiant, but so full of _guilt, _like he’s sorry just for…_existing_.

Stan never wanted to go back. He didn’t think he’d be able to do it, even then, as he nodded his head, _‘yes’_. He held out his open palm, and Bill had steadied it so gently, with his own underneath, as though he was afraid Stan might break, right then and there.

When Bill cut his palm, with that dirty piece of glass, it had hurt more than _anything_ Stan had felt up until that point.

It doesn’t hurt as much, now, as he follows the motion against his wrist.

_“I swear, Bill.”_

Down in the kitchen, Richie and Bill stand alone, as they hear the engine of Eddie’s Escalade getting further away.

“They’ll g-get what we need,” Bill says vacantly, as though he’s trying to comfort Richie, but the words seem fairly empty, when he says them out loud, “We’ll be ready f-for it.”

Richie doesn’t say anything, only nods slowly, for longer than is probably necessary.

“I…I’m g-gonna go and call Mike. Make sure he’s okay.”

Richie nods again.

“Go find St-Stan. I don’t think he should be…alone.”

“You got it, Big Bill,” Richie mutters, to himself, as he watches Bill leave the room.

He ascends the staircase several steps at a time, looking around the walls of their house as though it’s somehow…unfamiliar now. There are pictures on the walls of the upstairs corridor. Photographs. Of Bill, beside his first car, that ugly little red thing, holding up the keys with a bashful smile on his face. Of Eddie, trying to block the camera, in the driver’s seat of a limo, the first one he ever bought. Of Mike, in the garden of their old house, lying on the grass and laughing, two golden Labrador puppies jumping all over his chest. Of Beverly, spinning in the first dress she ever made, copper curls glistening in the sunshine through the kitchen window. Of Ben, in his tuxedo at their senior prom, blushing as he poses for the camera with a red rose boutonniere that matched Beverly’s dress. Of Richie, at some dodgy little dive bar he can’t even remember the name of, behind a microphone, grinning as the audience laughs. Of Stan, graduating with his Master’s degree from NYU Stern, snapped in one of those rare moments where he’s _really_ smiling.

“Stan?!” Richie shouts, but gets no response.

The door to Bill’s office is open, and Richie expects to find him in there, probably reading, or on the computer, vigorously researching anything he can find out that might gain them some sort of advantage. Stan will almost definitely have a plan, no matter how little he wants to be involved, no matter how afraid Richie knows he really will be.

He’s not in there.

It’s not the letters, that Richie notices, but Stan’s watch, polished and glinting under the desk lamp. He approaches, instantly cautious, instantly feeling his pulse quickening, instantly feeling…_wrong_.

“Stan, you in here?”

Stan doesn’t respond. Of course. As though Richie was expecting him to just crawl out from beneath the desk. He slides Stan’s watch across the wooden surface with his fingers, touching the clock face, notices the ring, and Stan’s glasses. His heart leaps into his throat so quickly Richie feels as though he’s going to vomit again. He even doubles over a little, quickly picks out the position of the trash can.

He still doesn’t even notice the letters, as he hurries out of the room, and down the corridor.

“STAN?!”

He goes straight to Stan’s bedroom, now, barging through the half-open door. He’s not in there, but the bathroom door is firmly closed, and Richie feels another wave of nausea as he rushes to it, rattling at the door handle. Realising it’s locked was something he was expecting, but that doesn’t mean that it scares him any less.

“Stan it’s Rich! Can you let me in?!”

He thumps his fist against the door several times, waits a maximum of three seconds of resulting silence, before he starts hitting it again.

“STAN?! OPEN THE DOOR!” His voice is hysterical, now, cracking and wavering as he continues to shout, “PLEASE STAN, OPEN THE DOOR! LET ME IN!”

There’s still no response, and Richie can feel bile rising in his throat as he continues to tug at the door handle furiously. He screams over his shoulder.

“BILL! BILL, HELP ME!”

It’s mere seconds before he hears thundering footsteps down the corridor, and Bill comes barrelling into the room. He freezes when he sees Richie barging his shoulder against the locked bathroom door, but it’s only for an instant.

“Step back, Rich! Get outta the way!”

Richie does so immediately at Bill’s command, as Bill holds his hands either side of the door frame and kicks it hard, just below the handle, driving his heel into it several times with such force that despite its quality, the lock tears free from the frame as it swings violently open.

Regardless of what they might have been expecting…might have been fearing…nothing could have prepared them for the reality…the pallor of Stan’s skin…the glassy look in his half-closed eyes…the blood…so much blood…smeared across the edge of the marble tub…pooled on the floor and seeping into the cracks of the surrounding tiles beneath his hand as it hangs over the side lifelessly…in the water…stained so red with it, it seems as though he isn’t sitting in water, at all.

_“Oh my god…” _is all Bill breathes quietly, shakily, as he rushes over, with Richie close at his side.

On his knees at the side of the tub, Bill holds his hands either side of Stan’s face, lifting his head, patting his cheek quickly. Richie can tell that he’s trying to stay calm, when he’s feeling exactly the opposite. That’s a skill Bill has become very good at.

_“Stan…Stan look at me…please look at me…_Richie get towels!”

Richie rakes what he can out of the nearby closet, dropping everything onto the bathroom floor. The towels are all pristine, white, folded so neatly only Stan could have done it. Some of them are monogramed with his initials. Richie chokes on a sob when he sees it, but he doesn’t start crying…he can’t…he swallows it back and he grabs an armful of Stan’s perfect towels and he drops to his knees at Bill’s side. The palm of his hand slips through Stan’s blood, and it smears across the floor, and up his arm, greasy and thick…Richie has never felt so utterly sickened before…his body wants nothing more than to expel this feeling immediately, in a somewhat projectile fashion, but once more, Richie swallows it back, as he watches Bill rise with his arms around Stan’s chest, lifting him out of the bath.

“Call an ambulance!” Bill shouts, then, as he singlehandedly hauls Stan out of the bathtub and onto the bathroom floor, holding his head in his lap, and pressing towels to the lengthy, terrifyingly neat wounds cut into the flesh of his arms, from wrist to inner elbow.

Richie clumsily retrieves his phone from his pocket, bloody fingerprints blurring the screen as he dials and holds it to his ear. Every part of him is shaking, as he watches Bill rip open the front of his overshirt, buttons scattering like marbles across the tiled floor. He rakes it off his shoulders and holds it between his teeth as he tears messy strips off the bottom, tying one as tightly as he can around Stan’s upper arm, and then the other. He uses a pencil from his shirt pocket as a sort of winch, tying it to the fabric on his closest arm and twisting; a makeshift tourniquet. Richie stammers through his call to the 911 operator, thinking grimly that he would never have known how to do that, himself...

“Is he breathing?” Asks the voice on the phone, and it gives Richie pause.

“I…I-is he breathing? Bill is he breathing?! Please tell me he’s breathing! I can’t…” Richie can feel the need to cry wracking his whole body, burning in his chest, “_Bill please tell me he’s fucking breathing right now…_”

Bill is still holding tightly to the towels pressed against Stan’s arms, maintaining pressure; Richie can see the veins in Bill’s own arms straining against it. He leans down close over him, beside Stan’s slightly blue lips, and Richie sees the relief in Bill’s eyes before he even says anything.

“Yeah! Yeah, he’s breathing…he’s breathing please…hurry…you have to help him…you have to…” Richie feels himself getting faint, now, adrenaline pumping through his veins faster and more thoroughly than he can handle. His hands are shaking so much he drops his phone. The screen shatters against the bathroom floor, but he couldn’t care less, only rushing to retrieve it so that he can continue the call.

It’s mere minutes before the ambulance arrives, but it feels like _hours._

Everything is just a blur, after that.

When the EMTs come into the bathroom, trailing Richie, Bill is moved aside. He’s _covered_ in Stan’s blood, and his face is pale, his eyes unblinking as he watches him. Richie stands beside him, gripping at Bill’s wrist between them so hard he must be hurting him, but Bill doesn’t react. Richie, however, begins to cry, now, silently, but full-bodied, doubling over several times in agony as they watch the oxygen mask get placed over Stan’s face, watch them attach him to a drip, watch him lifted onto a stretcher.

One of the medics pats Bill on the back, ‘You did a good job,’ he says, ‘You might have just saved his life. Not many people would have thought to do what you did.’ Bill looks at him, nods slightly in acknowledgement, but he isn’t really _there_.

Richie hasn’t ever seen him like that, before.

They are taken to the hospital by some of the medical crew, trailing the ambulance as the siren blares, and every new rotation of the lights and the sound makes Richie’s stomach lurch. When they finally arrive at the hospital, as soon as they step out of the car, Richie vomits violently onto the asphalt outside the emergency bay. Bill holds him upright as he cries, and vomits _again._

They tail the ambulance crew into the hospital, and Stan is taken away immediately; they aren’t allowed to follow. Richie is still inconsolable as they sit on uncomfortable chairs in the waiting area, tearing at his hair and biting at his fingernails until several of them are bleeding. When he isn’t crying audibly, there are thick tears pouring down his cheeks anyway, like now that he has begun, he’s unable to stop. A nurse offers them food, water, coffee, clean clothes, but Richie point-blank refuses everything, and Bill declines politely, with an empty smile. She offers for them to speak to someone, perhaps a chaplain, but once more, Bill shakes his head.

Bill doesn’t cry.

Not even a little.

He is the one who calls Eddie.

He is the one who sits close to Richie, and puts his arm around him, and stops him when he’s biting at one of his fingers so much that blood starts running down the side of his hand, pulling him into a tight hug that doesn’t release until Eddie, Ben and Beverly come rushing over.

He is the one who consoles Beverly as she openly weeps into his shoulder, Ben behind her, pressing his forehead to Bill’s, while Richie collapses into Eddie.

He is the one who has to make the phonecall to Mike, to explain to him what happened, to listen silently as Mike cries down the phone, and reassure him when he’s blaming himself.

And still, Bill doesn’t cry at all.

Not even when they hear the words, ‘Blood transfusion’, from the doctor who has intermittently been coming to see them over the past hour.

“We’re the same blood type,” Bill responds, instantly, “Take mine.”

A nurse takes Bill into another room, to take his blood, and Richie jumps up to go with him, without a second thought. He isn’t crying, anymore, though his eyes are bloodshot behind his glasses, his face and his hair an utter mess. He holds onto Bill’s arm, as they take his blood, and scrubs some of Stan’s, from Bill’s pale cheek.

It’s four more hours, before they get what they’ve been waiting for.

_“We’re not completely clear, yet, but he’s stable.”_

Bill looks as though he might break, then, but still, he doesn’t.

And, once more, Bill is the one who holds Stan’s sobbing mother in his arms, when his parents arrive, another three hours later, the one who talks to his father, and has to explain what happened…to try to explain _why_…

Stan’s parents are allowed to see him, first.

Bill sits stoically in the same waiting room chair he has been in for the past eight hours, and stares at the wall.

When they’re finally allowed in, the five of them at once, Richie is the first to cry again. He holds Stan’s hand tightly in his own, fingers interlocked, as he sits beside his bed, leg bouncing rapidly in agitation.

“You really scared me there, Stan the Man,” he croaks, through sobs, as Eddie perches on the edge of the bed, surprisingly calm, though his eyes are red, and brimmed with tears.

Beverly sits at Stan’s other side, with his other hand between hers, so gently, as though she’s scared he might shatter if she touches him too roughly. Ben stands behind her, hands on her shoulders, and Bill sees the tears rolling down Ben’s face, too, as he paces around at the end of the bed.

After a while, they leave him, one by one, Ben and Beverly, first. Beverly leaves a kiss on Stan’s forehead, Ben, his cheek close to his lips.

Richie and Eddie go next. Eddie leans in to peck the side of his face, but it’s slow, lingering, meaningful.

“_We’ll fix it_,” Bill hears Eddie whisper, “_We’ll kill it for you_.”

Richie, still clinging to Stan’s hand so desperately, kisses his knuckles, rest his forehead in against Stan’s temple, closes his eyes. He stays there, for a while, and Bill and Eddie only watch, in silence, while Eddie reaches over to squeeze Bill’s hand, so hard it hurts, but Bill knows it won’t have been intentional, only meant to be supportive.

On his way out of the room, Richie and Bill share a meaningful look.

Bill isn’t quite sure what he’s supposed to do.

How can he possibly convey how he’s feeling in any realistic way?

_His heart is breaking._

He approaches the bedside, now, and he can hardly bear to look at Stan, this way. He looks so pale…so fragile…so delicate…beautiful but completely and utterly broken…

“I’m s-sorry…” Bill hears himself say, without much intending to. His voice is quiet, weak…the opposite of what he knows he’s supposed to be, right now. What he knows he _needs_ to be, right now.

“I’m so…sorry…” He says, once more, and he knows it’s too late, now, his strength has all been sapped away…his resolve in tatters…his mind a wreck. His knees feel so weak all of a sudden, like they can’t keep him upright. And they don’t. He falls at the side of Stan’s bed, feeling the sadness spilling from his body so suddenly and thoroughly that it’s physically painful. His head feels as though it might burst.

“I’m sorry…” He repeats, _again. _This time it comes out as a sob, and it’s followed by another, and another, until he’s bawling on the floor, barely able to speak, stutter or no.

“I’m so sorry I m-made you….it’s my fault…you di-didn’t w-want to…please…” He begs, as he reaches for Stan’s cold fingers, “Please don’t go…” He holds Stan’s hand tightly in his own, and the lack of reciprocation is _awful._

“Please, St-Stan…I’m begging you…” He sniffs, as he watches the side of his face, “…please d-d-don’t leave me…” His fingers squeeze at Stan’s, as though he’s hoping for some response, even though he knows he won’t get one, “_Please come back to me_.”

The room is silent, for the next several minutes, but for Bill’s sniffling, his shaking breaths, and the soft beeping of the heart-rate monitor.

He reaches up to brush aside the curls that are sticking to Stan’s forehead, damp with perspiration. _Stan would hate that, if he knew,_ Bill thinks, with a weak smile. Bill kisses his cheek, and his temple, his forehead, and then, ever-so gently, his lips, as he brushes his thumb back and forth against his hand.

“_I love you_,” he says softly, “_I’m going to make this right_.”

When he stands, his legs feel shaky, but there’s strength returning in his body, now.

_“I’ll bring you its f-fucking heart.”_

He doesn’t want to leave, but he knows he has to…knows what he has to do.

“_And if I don’t…_”

He lifts Stan’s fingers, leaving a last, lingering kiss against them.

“_I’ll bring you mine_.”


End file.
